


Moscow: 10.8.2013

by eternaleponine



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, K-Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Jaegercon, this is my response to the K-Day Prompt.  </p><p>Sasha (not yet Kaidanovsky) finds out that sometimes it's not just about fighting.  Sometimes there are things worth fighting for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moscow: 10.8.2013

When Sasha walked out of the doors of the club, skin still sweat-sticky and a bruise blooming along her cheekbone, she stepped into a world that was irreparably different than the one she'd stepped out of hours before, and not just because it had been light when she'd gone in and it was dark – well past midnight – now. 

"What's going on?" she asked, nudging her way none too politely into a group that was crowded around the tiny screen of someone's phone. Clusters of people dotted the streets, unusual at this hour even in this part of the city. "What's happening?"

But no one answered, and she growled and stomped away. She caught words here and there as she made her way back to the tiny apartment that she (along with a varying cast of others) not-entirely-legally inhabited, but nothing that amounted to much. The most common ones, though, were 'America' and 'destroyed' and although the Cold War had ended around the same time she was born, it had left her country in chaos in its wake and even if her own memories of the time were hazy, the cultural memory was ingrained deep in her Russian bones, so her first thought was, "Good riddance."

At home (the word might apply with the application of a little imagination) she poured herself a drink and lit a cigarette and hoped there was an open wireless network with a strong enough signal that maybe she could find out on her own what had seemingly every person in Moscow sitting up and taking notice.

Most of what she was able to find was sketchy at best – shaky video clips taken on cell phones as people ran away from... what? She couldn't tell, and after nearly an hour of combing the internet for anything remotely resembling answers, she gave up. Why should she care anyway? One more cigarette and another drink and she fell asleep alone.

She woke up a few hours later, too warm with someone's arm draped over her, smothering her with his weight and the stink of his breath. It was the price she paid and it was a relatively cheap one, most of the time. Right now, though, she wanted nothing to do with him. 

There was nothing to eat so she didn't bother looking, just pushed herself up and shoved her feet into her boots. She'd won last night (she almost always did) and so she had a little money. She went out looking for coffee and good and a stable internet connection.

In the time she'd been out, news had finally started to surface, and her breakfast got cold as she scrolled through, thinking at first that it's a joke, a hoax, an incredibly elaborate marketing ploy for some Hollywood summer blockbuster... anything but reality. 

Monsters didn't exist. Not in real life, and certainly not rising up out of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where if they zigged instead of zagged they could end up _here_ instead of _there_... not that it was any concern this far inland... probably... except they were throwing tanks and missiles at the thing and it was still going strong. 

She should have been scared. Everyone was scared, and it was a logical reaction to a B-movie scenario come to life. But Sasha didn't do scared. It had been beaten out of her. Instead, she got angry. She got angry enough to ignore the itch in her blood that wanted to send her crawling back "home" and she got angry enough to forget that the Motherland had been far more eager to deal out discipline than anything like love. And for once her anger had a purpose. It had a target and a goal. She wouldn't just be beating men bloody for a few dollars and bragging rights, which were only worth anything if anyone cared to listen and no one ever had.

This was a different kind of anger than the one that had burned her up inside for as long as she could remember. This was something else, something new. This was an anger that turned her to ice, to steel, honed her sometimes reckless instincts into a weapon that could be used to defend her country and its people, to defend all of humanity if that's what it took, because sometimes it was a miserable, fucked-up world, but it was _her_ miserable, fucked-up world and nothing, no _thing_ from the depths of God-knows-where was going to take that from her.

She signed away her life to the Russian military, and later to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. When they opened the Shatterdome in Vladivostok, she was the first one there, demanding a shot at piloting the first Russian Jaeger. No was not an acceptable answer.


End file.
